Tuesday, April 17, 2018

President Trump is not exactly draining the swamp in front of the Federal Reserve Marriner S. Eccles Building in Washington D.C.

Reports indicate he is about to nominate Michelle "Miki" Bowman for one of the empty Federal Reserve Board seats. There is nothing to indicate she will be a significant influence on the board.

She appears to be a second-tier government operative who will go along with the influencers on the board.

She is currently a Kansas bank commissioner.

In the past, she was director, compliance officer and trust officer at her family’s 135-year-old Farmers & Drovers Bank in Council Grove, Kan.

She has also done extensive swamp work. She worked in the office of former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole and as an investigative attorney and counsel for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

She also was director of congressional and intergovernmental affairs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and was a policy adviser to former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

Trump also announced the nomination of Columbia University professor Richard Clarida to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. I discussed Clarida here. He will have more influence than Bowman and like Fed chairman Jay Powell appears to be sympathetic to the Taylor Rule.